A lone dog barks in the distance. We cannot determine where, or even from what direction, but the echo of wailing, sometimes of whimpering, reverberates like a mist in the early morning that quietly pervades but can never be grasped. Perhaps it persists, and we leave the safety of our own home in search of the cry, as the forlorn sounds made wavers between a spectrum of hurt, pain, loneliness or urgency of need; no matter the reason, the bark is desperate.

We begin the journey in one direction, but suddenly the winds of voices heard shifts, and we believe it may be coming from a completely different direction. We shift course and walk in the exact opposite direction. The barking continues, now with greater tones of reverberating alarm, drifting from over there, somewhere out there, never to be determined. The barking stops. You pause, listen; but only the quietude of the midnight air breaks the stillness of the echo that now sounds within one’s imagination.

You begin to doubt yourself; was it my own fears, my own fantasy? Did the sound ever break upon the dawn of objective reality, or was it something that originated from deep within my own needs and wants? You go home. Then, a few minutes later, after turning off the lights and drifting off into the slumber of night’s call, a lone dog barks in the distance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, that Federal or Postal employee is the distant bark, and the help that never arrives reflects the situation that so often describes the events that unfold. Federal Disability Retirement, as the analogy may be stretched, is the person who reaches out to try and find the source of the barking. Failing to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is the metaphor where the searching man and the barking dog never meet.

Federal Disability Retirement is not just another “benefit” or a “give-away”; rather, it is part of the employment package that the Federal or Postal worker signed on to, and once obtained, allows for the Federal or Postal worker who is on disability retirement to pursue other careers and vocations, and more importantly, to focus upon regaining one’s health in the process by being separated from the work that has become problematic in the meantime.

And like the lone dog that barks in the distance, the Federal or Postal employee who fails to take the next step by not preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, will end up like the dog that wails pitifully deep into the recesses of midnight regrets.

Do you have a linear, sequential methodology? Is the legal argumentation systematically constructed? Or, is the mish-mash approach consigned – of a hodgepodge of thousands of hands at needlepoint in creating a colorful quilt for the Fall Festival of creative designs?

Is the Bruner Presumption invoked as an afterthought, and the Bracey-argument concerning accommodations defined in an obfuscated manner, such that the argument reveals more about what you do not know and understand, than of a pin-point accuracy as to the sharpening and attacking of the issues preemptively recognized? Have, indeed, the knives been sharpened for the battle ahead, or have you revealed the dullness of the edges such that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will likely scoff with disdain and deny the case at the First Stage of this process?

There is a substantive distinction to be made between making an argument in a non-systematic way, as in a proverbial “shot-gun” approach or of throwing what substance you believe will stick and subsequently splattering it against the wall in hopes of increasing a statistically deficient implementation of the process; that, as opposed to a streamlined, methodological approach of sequentially addressing each issue in a preemptive, categorical manner, as well as recognizing what not to touch at this initial stage of the Federal Disability Retirement process, and in realizing what should be addressed.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, basing one’s approach upon a “hope and a prayer” that things will turn out well, is probably not the most effective nor efficient engagement of behavior.

First, the initial process and stage itself is a bureaucratically lengthy procedure, such that if the Federal Disability Retirement applicant does not enhance the chances of success at the First Stage, time is “lost” in that a denial will simply quantify by exponential multiplication the time taken at the Second, Reconsideration Stage; and further, another catastrophic delay if an appeal is needed to be taken to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

In the end, the mish-mash approach is what most of us do in life, and often is the very reason why we ended up where we are. But in the preparation, formulation and filing of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, it may well be time to abandon the mish-mash approach, and consider consulting with a Federal Disability Retirement lawyer who specializes in a different approach – one reflecting a systematic, methodological and sequentially logical engagement, refined through many years of experience and encounters with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Every now and again, someone will make that inane statement that seems to fly by in a discourse of overwhelming linguistic overcrowding of so many such pearls of wisdom: “Oh, we’re all just human.” Is it a logical tautology in a strict sense? The “we” referred to is obviously a subject which includes individual human beings; the “human” described and identified, is the same as the “we” previously posited. So, it is the same as saying: “Oh, humans are all just human.”

If that were said, instead, would we not turn with a puzzled look of suspicion, as if the statement made was uttered in such a nonsensical term that the meeting of eyes would, or at least should, erupt with uncontrollable laughter like two hyenas cackling at the full moon? Or, despite the inane nature of meaninglessness, do we all have a shared cultural norm of language, such that we recognize and comprehend such statements? For, the sentence itself evokes meanings of shared belief: We are all less than perfect; Don’t worry about it, we all do that from time to time; The ordinariness of human frailty allows for each to give another the benefit of the doubt.

It also points to a slightly deeper meaning: That, in our humanity, how truly ordinary we are. Yet, isn’t that very ordinariness that which allows for the shared commonality of community? The fact that we are ordinary is precisely what allows us all to “fit in”, and concurrently, touches upon that darker side of human nature to spur cruelty, arrogance, superiority and disdain. For, it is the Darwinian predisposition to conquer and defeat, of “showing up” everyone else that we are what we are not created as – being ordinary.

That is why, when a medical condition is revealed, it is the weakness and the vulnerability that suddenly causes others to shy away, to shun, and to harass and prey upon. Our ordinariness, in combination with the scientifically and anthropologically explained behavior traits of “survival instincts” and aggressive, predatory inclinations, somewhat defines why we are who we are and how, in a society that supposedly advances continually, we still revert back to your roots of caveman-like follies.

That is what Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition triggers a need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, need to understand: That we our human; our humanness reveals vulnerabilities; that such vulnerabilities will manifest themselves in quite ordinary revelations, including medical conditions; and, once medical conditions are revealed, it will likely trigger aggressive and predatory reactions, and attract those very hominids who, by Darwinian triggers of genetic predispositions, will react in an attempt to rise above our humanity.

Agencies act that way; the U.S. Postal Service certainly treats it employees in that thread of behavioral responsiveness. For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, keep in mind that, in filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, how truly ordinary we are is merely another way of recognizing that not only are we just human, but we can also reveal that dark side inherent in all in the rise to subvert just how truly ordinary we are, which only further uncovers how truly ordinary they are, as well.

We tend to believe that the wars we fight today will forever remain in the memories of future generations; and so we carry about us, in the universe of our own minds, an imprint of selective relevance, while all the time passing by buried encounters of past generations left in remains of this earth’s bosom.

How many pastures of hallowed grounds do we step upon each day, where centuries ago the Native American fought against a rival tribe? Or in Europe, where fiefdoms were protectorates and knights battled with sabers drawn and armies vanquished? But for ivory-tower historians who dig through the minutiae of battles in times forgotten, what wars are remembered excepting in the minds of loved ones left behind and old men and women shuttered in corners of traumatic memories once relevant, but now shelved as dusty remains in an uncaring universe?

Who remembers the Spanish Civil War (except, perhaps, the dying countrymen themselves) but through literary genres by Hemingway’s reportage, his classic novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and of Malraux’s participation and subsequent writings – all overshadowed by portending events just northeast in the dark cauldrons of Germany’s bestiality and the world marching towards a greater war? And what of private wars – those within one’s own mind, or between neighbors, within marriages and among family members; do we too loosely bandy about such terms, or is it appropriate based upon the level of ferocity and the tactics used?

Perhaps you are sitting around with a group of friends or colleagues, and discussing irrelevant but fun topics of dystopian pastimes, as in, “What if Germany had won the war; what would this world be like today?” (Some would immediately contend, of course, that both Germany and Japan did indeed win their respective wars, ultimately – through economic dominance and rise of subsequent influence; and thus, to engage in hypotheticals is a meaningless exercise of embracing a virtual reality which has its parallel universe in reality, anyway). But in the course of the conversation, an individual sitting morosely in the corner suddenly blurts out, “I was in the war of ___, and that is how I lost my leg – see!”

Would silence ensue, because the rules of the “fun” game were merely to engage in make-believe, and here was evidence of a warrior from a real war? Or, given the same set of circumstances, one of the participants suddenly admits: “I am fighting a war with my family.” Would we take him seriously, or just ignore with aplomb and impassive expressions a deviation from the world of our own fantasies?

Wars forgotten – whether of unnamed tombstones or hallowed grounds overgrown with weeds and concrete buildings; or of private hells within the confines of one’s own mind; they are all “real” to the extent we remember, and vanish upon the last person who recalls.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must fight against the ongoing “wars” within agencies, and are forced to battle their own private hells because of medical conditions that impact the ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the strategic move in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS of CSRS Offset, may be the best way to move beyond the trench-warfare that one must engage in daily.

For, in the end, the wars forgotten are all advanced beyond by some movement forward – and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must get beyond the rut of this career, filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is that final echo of a marching step advancing, in the constant and all-encompassing battles in those wars forgotten.

Seven False Myths about OPM Disability Retirement

1) I have to be totally disabled to get Postal or Federal disability retirement.
False: You are eligible for disability retirement so long as you are unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of your job. Thus, it is a much lower standard of disability.

2) My injury or illness has to be job-related.
False: You can get disability even if your condition is not work related. If your medical condition impacts your ability to perform any of the core elements of your job, you are eligible, regardless of how or where your condition occurred.

3) I have to quit my federal job first to get disability.
False: In most cases, you can apply while continuing to work at your present job, to the extent you are able.

4) I can't get disability if I suffer from a mental or nervous condition.
False: If your condition affects your job performance, you can still qualify. Psychiatric conditions are treated no differently from physical conditions.

5) Disability retirement is approved by DOL Workers Comp.
False: It's the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) the federal agency that administers and approves disability for employees at the US Postal Service or other federal agencies.

6) I can wait for OPM disability retirement for many years after separation.
False: You only have one year from the date of separation from service - otherwise, you lose your right forever.

7) If I get disability retirement, I won't be able to apply for Scheduled Award (SA).
False: You can get a Scheduled Award under the rules of OWCP even after you get approved for OPM disability retirement.